intentions to love...

Intentions. Aspirations. Lofty goals. These are what I’ve been writing down and refining for the past four years. Really, since turning fifty. It’s become my routine to check my ‘daily living’ against these stated intentions. I hope by sharing some that I will encourage you to grab a notebook and begin to jot how you ‘intend’ to live out the rest of your days.

I wrote last month explaining how I came to the practice of recording my “intentions” or “intended wings”. I shared my first intention here, and today I want to unpack at least one more.

And this would have been finished and published last week had it not been for the working out of what I’m about to type: “it’s about the people, not the tasks”. This is the third “intention” written in my notebook. Last week, we had the opportunity to host at camp the staff that would have worked with us this summer. We had to cancel all of our summer camp program due to Covid, but gathering the staff once became a priority once we could legally host a few people.

So I smile as I think about writing this next intention in my little book. A reminder to myself :

My intention is to value people, loving and knowing them, above all tasks and all distractions.

The same pastor that I wrote last month who encouraged me to pursue being emotionally healthy also encouraged me to live life in such a way that people were valued. 

I still remember sitting with him in our dining room discussing serving with the high school youth group. He read aloud some verses from 1 Thessalonians where Paul explained that he loved the Thessalonians so much that he wanted to share his life with them as well as the gospel. Meditating on these verses determined the course of my life and ministry in very literal ways.

I pondered what it looked like to share not only the gospel and biblical truth, but the rest of my life as well. Both my husband and myself determined that this value would characterize our lives. Fleshing that out has looked differently in various situations.

I came to see in the gospels that Jesus had this same value. Children loved Him and ran straight towards Him. He saw them, touched them, and smiled at them. 

He spent years living alongside the disciples. I can only imagine all they learned as they watched their Lord teach and care for the people and for themselves.

Jesus had women amongst His faithful followers. Despite the culture of the times, many stories are recorded that show Jesus talking, teaching, pausing to explain, and loving these women. They shared life alongside the disciples and alongside Jesus.

So this became my norm. Students became real parts of our life. Coming along grocery shopping with me, playing with our kids, babysitting, and sitting for hours talking. Some of these teens are now into their late thirties and forties. And several of them remain friends these thirty years later. We made soup together, made breakfast pastries called “monkey bread” for years, and played rounds and rounds of ultimate frisbee! We did life together.

Then my family relocated to South Bend to work at Camp Ray Bird. We worked alongside one of the teens that we had done life with in Ohio. He became our boss and closest friend. And the three of us were a living visual aid to this intention from years ago that said ‘people mattered most’.

We’ve had years and years of opportunities to live life alongside the staff that came each summer. Our children grew up with examples of faith in college students sacrificing time, energy and better paying jobs. They grew up with people walking into our house and being comfortable to open up the fridge and help themselves. They shared rooms, and made room in our family for some to join us permanently as ‘family’. And though our children by birth are now grown in their twenties, they are each opening their homes to do life with others. 

Recently, I’ve reflected often on the web of relationships around me. It is deeply humbling for sure. One former staff member become “real friend” said recently, “it’s pretty sweet to have known you when I was sixteen, seeing you through my teenage eyes, and to know you now as a friend”. 

Another man, while in a meeting with me, told the others in the meeting, “I’ve known Susan twenty years and she is like a grandparent to my children.”

People are irreplaceable.

That’s a lot of knowing.

That’s a lot of life lived together.Has it always been easy, comfortable or pain free? Certainly not.

But again I’m reminded of Jesus and the pain He surely felt as He was betrayed and then abandoned by most all of His disciples on the night of His arrest. The many times that they did not understand Him, His mission, and His commitment to them despite themselves.

I spent much of today crying over the pain in a young woman’s life who intersected with mine some fifteen years ago. 

We have the same opportunity to follow His example. There will be pain, because really allowing ourselves to be known always carries the risk of hurt with it. I have been hurt deeply more than once. And by people whom I have worked to value and love- certainly not perfectly, but with honest intent.

Satan would have us draw back in fear of the pain and potential rejection. The more I am deeply known, the more deeply I can be wounded.

Satan would have us say that the risk is too great and the reward is imagined. 

Jesus and Paul push us forward, push us towards people and relationships, push us towards vulnerability and sharing life together in practical and meaningful ways.

I want to encourage you to pause and consider what you value in the area of people and relationships. We say that we are the body of Christ. We say that being united in Him makes us brothers and sisters, makes us family. But do we flesh that out in our daily comings and goings?

Our lives and actions reveal what we truly value. Take stock and consider yourself. 

My intention is to value people, loving and knowing them, above all tasks and all distractions.